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STEM Tuesday– Cryptography (Math)/Spy Science– Writing Tips & Resources

By on December 17, 2024   /   Cryptography/Spy Science, STEM Tuesday  

 

noun: cryptology

  1. the study of codes, or the art of writing and solving them.

As an advocate for STE(A)M, I want to connect cryptology to the arts. It may seem an unlikely connection, but there are many examples of hidden messages in literature, music, and visual art. I give examples below and include an art activity and a link to an article that gives examples of contemporary hidden messages.

Literature

For older readers, there is the classic THE DAVINCI CODE by Dan Brown. Many of you may have wondered (I sure did) how much was real and how much made up. But this post isn’t about the novel but using it as an example of code in literature. Middle grade writers like Blue Balliett and Ellen Raskin incorporate puzzles to solve and provide clues for an alert reader. I enjoy stories about secret messages and clues and it adds another level of mental activity to the reading.

Music

Music has provided opportunities as well for secret meanings. I’ve included classical examples here. And one of my favorite musical examples is in the Alfred Hitchcock film “The Lady Vanishes.” Miss Froy disappears but not before she entrusts Iris and Gilbert with a musical phrase that passes a secret message to the Foreign Office.

From the online article Musical Cryptography: Hiding Messages in the Music! (link below) from PuzzleNation Blog.

 This sort of musical wordplay appears in compositions by Ravel, Debussy, and Shostakovich among others. Johann Sebastian Bach did this often enough that the succession of notes B-A-C-H is now called a Bach motif.

The composer Dmitri Shostakovich lived under a very repressive regime in Russia. He included passages in his compositions that “critiqued” the government. However the members of the government didn’t know enough about music to see that. This was dangerous because penalties for speaking against the government were severe.

Visual art/graphic design

For an activity this month, I am looking at Secret Messages in a way we see every day. The opportunities to be a spy are few these days, but knowing how to spot messages coming to you is a good skill. According to John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, Cryptology is the study of the codes and ciphers used to create secret writing. We usually think of spies and stories, but there is “secret writing” all over.

For instance, in the article 36 Hidden Messages in Company Logos You See All the Time, by Kelly Kuehn (link below) you can see how people are influenced without even realizing they are being influenced. Check out the article for other examples.

You may have thought the dot over the “i” was used to give the logo a pop of color, but it’s actually part of a hidden—and creative—message. The red dot is actually a bowl of salsa. The two T’s are people, and the yellow triangle in between them is a chip. It’s supposed to represent people coming together to share a tasty snack of chips and salsa.

Once you know that this is common, you can find examples of hidden messages all over.

When I was teaching graphic design in at university, I had the students make 50 (yes, 50) small logo sketches, known as thumbnails, with their initials. We used tracing paper and pencil and it was about ideas, not perfection. Then we could discuss the merits of some of the individual ideas and use them to move on to a more polished design. You can, of course, make fewer sketches – how many you need to get the idea you like.

There are two aspects to consider. One is the visual part. Is it attractive? Colorful? Compact? Attention getting?

The second aspect is the underlying meaning. Does it respond to the personality of the designer? And – does it say more than an initial quick glance would reveal? Here is where the hidden meaning comes in. This requires higher level thinking to manipulate the space to include a secret message.

It helps to have a plan.

  1. What is the overall spirit of the logo? Some possible answers are serious, playful, sporty, mysterious. Write it down to remind yourself.
  2. What is the secret message? Your answer to #1 might be sporty so somewhere there could be the shape of say, a soccer ball or a running shoe. Can you incorporate it into the design so that it isn’t immediately apparent, but is easily recognizable? There are many books on logo design, both how-to and the best-of.
  3. Try to make the final drawing clean and in black and white.

Yes, a challenge. Sometimes it helps to work with a partner or a team, the way a professional design studio would work.

After settling on an idea, then make a Very Clean drawing.  The drawings can be scanned (at 300dpi) as jpgs or pngs, for use on such documents as school assignments. For younger grades, a rubber stamp or stickers are fun for embellishments.

Have fun with your secret message logo!

 

Margo Lemieux is professor emerita at Lasell University and spent time in October doing plein air painting in cranberry bogs.

 

Hiding Messages in Music

Musical Cryptography: Hiding Messages in the Music!

 

More musical messages

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/musical-cryptography-codes?mc_cid=82ccbfcf25&mc_eid=d3196740af

 

Cryptology definition

https://cty.jhu.edu/programs/on-campus/courses/cryptology-code

 

Company Logos You See All the Time, by Kelly Kuehn

https://www.rd.com/list/secret-messages-company-logos/

 

 

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STEM Tuesday– Cryptography (Math)/Spy Science– In the Classroom

By on December 10, 2024   /   Cryptography/Spy Science, STEM Tuesday  

In my former career, I worked with communications and communication security (which included cryptography). It is a topic that will always be near and dear to my heart. This month, I read the following books:

 

How to Be an International Spy book

How to Be an International Spy by Andy Briggs

This book covers lots of different topics associated with being a spy. The science around it all ranges from psychology to quantum physics. It includes lots of practice activities to help you fully engage in the topic.

 

Top Secret Science Book

Top Secret Science: Projects You’re Not Supposed to Know About by Jennifer Swanson

If you’re looking more for the history of secret projects, this is the book for you. It looks at a variety of programs that were run in secret.

 

Can You Crack the Code book

Can You Crack the Code? by Ella Schwartz and Lily Williams

If your goal is to learn how to create and crack secret codes, you might want to check out this book. It does a great job of covering the major cryptography methods. There are lots of secret codes to practice with, too.

 

 

Rather than making up activities to go along with these books, I want to share some of the fabulous resources that are already out there that would pair well with this month’s theme.

Check out “The Farm”

The CIA may be a secretive organization, but they’ve got an online presence. There are stories, games, activities, and other things for young readers to explore on their CIA Spy Kids site: https://www.cia.gov/spy-kids/games

They’ve also developed lesson plans for teachers: https://www.cia.gov/spy-kids/parents-teachers

Delve into Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity ensures that electronic devices are protected from criminal or unauthorized use. There are lots of career opportunities in cybersecurity, so it’s a great topic to learn more about.

The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Center for Infrastructure Assurance & Security (a.k.a. UTSA CIAS) has lots of resources for teachers and students on their website. Their activities cover grades K through 12. Here’s their main page: https://cias.utsa.edu/k-12

Their Cyber Games are found here: https://cias.utsa.edu/k-12/cybersecurity-games

Microsoft and Minecraft teamed together to provide resources for teaching cybersecurity, too. Check that out here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/education/blog/2023/10/elevate-cybersecurity-expertise-with-microsoft-and-minecraft-education

Learn About Public Key Encryption

Public Key Encryption is used to secure many different types of transactions on the internet, from email to online store payments. This video from PBS NOVA labs does a great job of explaining at a high level how public key encryption works: https://youtu.be/5xI4IJbHDiM?si=mM6cZJdTDUjeqVOs

NOVA Labs also has a cybersecurity game online: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/labs/lab/cyber – there is an educator guide to go along with it.

Cryptography in History

Pretty much all the books this month talk about the long history of secret-keeping (and cryptography to help with that). Here are some web sites that explore cryptography in history.

“The Secret Code of Lewis and Clark” activity: https://lewisandclarktrail.com/legacy/secretcode.htm

“Cryptology in the American Revolution” videos from NSA’s National Cryptologic Museum:
https://youtu.be/0smfiPWSHCQ?si=0ATj8hRevfpze0vo
https://youtu.be/WXEX7xFIz9E?si=AWh8GF4B7yD1Uo35

The National Cryptologic Museum also has videos on Steganography, Ciphers, or Visual Signaling during the American Revolution. For these and other videos, check out this playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWvkfYC3snpVYffYpKwjsbxwDO9IaNli7&si=3mYvmWEirAtp035P

More Resources

There are lots of cryptography and spy-related museums and websites out there to explore. Here are a few more you might want to check out.

The Spy Museum in Washington, DC: https://www.spymuseum.org – if you can’t get there in person, they also have some resources and activities online. They even have a podcast and a YouTube channel.

In the New York City area, there is the Washington Spy Trail. This includes a series of historic sites on Long Island that are associated with George Washington’s circle of spies during the Revolutionary War. If you’re lucky, you can tour some sites in person. If not, you can learn about some of it online: https://washingtonspytrail.com

You can learn more about American Civil War spies online: https://www.nps.gov/civilwar/spies.htm – each spy is associated with at least one National Park.


Janet Slingerland has written more than 20 books for children. Her book History’s Forgotten War Stories – https://www.12storylibrary.com/non-fiction/hidden-history/forgotten-war-stories-history – includes secrets and spies. To find out more about Janet and her books, check out her website – http://janetsbooks.com

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STEM Tuesday — Human Body– Author Interview

By on November 26, 2024   /   Human Body, STEM Tuesday  

I’m delighted to welcome Rachel Poliquin to the STEM Tuesday blog today. She has written a fabulous book about the body, but there’s a really cool twist. You’ll see…

Rachel Poliquin author

The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers book

“Kids and adult alike will love poring over the different sections of this book and will delight in informing their friends and family members of the facts they’ve learned.”—School Library Journal ★

A perfect book for engaging kids in STEM: This illustrated tour of our “leftover” body parts (like the appendix, or even goosebumps) introduces readers age 7-11 to the bizarre and fascinating science of evolution.

Welcome to the weirdest museum you’ll ever explore—the one inside your body.

Did you know your amazing, incredible body is a walking, talking museum of evolution? In The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers, tour guides Wisdom Tooth and Disappearing Kidney lead readers through a wacky museum dedicated to vestigial structures: body parts that were essential to our ancestors but are no longer useful to us—even though they’re still hanging around.

Engaging, hilarious, and a visual treat, The Museum of Odd Body Leftovers is a place you’ll want to visit again and again.

 

Welcome to STEM Tuesday, Rachel. We are delighted to chat with you! 

JS: How did you get the idea to write this awesome book?

RQ: An editor at Greystone actually pitched me the idea. Vestigial organs for kids? It sounded perfectly quirky, and of course I said yes.

JS: Did you have fun researching this?  

RQ: When I began writing the book, I knew nothing about evolution beyond the basics. I had no idea where to begin! But there is nothing I like more than knowing absolutely nothing about a subject. Once I decided to write the book as a museum of human evolution, I had to do a very deep dive to figure out which creatures were the first or last to have a particular trait so they could be part of the exhibits. I became a little obsessed with an evolution podcast called Common Descent. I’d listen to it for hours while I walked around my neighbourhood.

But this book will always have a special place in my heart.  I was finishing writing in March and April of 2020, just at the beginning of Covid when the world had shut up tight and no one knew what was happening.  I was reaching out to academics and researchers around the world—Belgium, New York, Japan, Mexico—to help me understand the science, and of course we talked about the situation in their countries and how they were coping. It helped me feel very connected in a time of isolation.

 

JS: What is your favorite “Odd Body Part”?

RQ: That a hard one!  I’m not sure.  Of course I love Disappearing Kidney, but I also really love all the theories about why humans lost their fur. Fur isn’t preserved in the same way bones are, so no one really knows. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE how Clayton illustrated the Survivor Hair theories as movie posters. These still crack me up everything time.

JS: What would you like readers to get out of this book?

RQ: Obviously, I’d love them to have a better understand of evolution and how all living creatures are connected. But I also tried to highlight that science and our understanding of the world is not all set and done. Scientific theories are constantly in motion and scientists are constantly discovering new things and thinking about the world in new ways—in other words, there is plenty of room for young scientists to make their mark.

JS: How would you like teachers/librarians to use this book?

RQ: The details of the science aren’t as important for kids to remember as the big picture, and I would love teachers to get really creative and maybe even incorporate the book into an art project.  Clayton has so many different sorts of museum displays in the book, which could be the basis of all sorts of kooky projects. All the bits and pieces in Museum Storage are all vestigial organs that didn’t make it into the book. I would love to see how kids would turn those into exhibits!

JS: Can you give any tips to writers who want to break into nonfiction children’s books?

RQ: I think I’ve been successful as a non-fiction writer because I write about things no one else has written about or things people assume are uninteresting or boring. I truly believe everything is fascinating, if only you look at it the right way.  I also think the best non-fiction books create worlds that are just as compelling and magical as fictional worlds. I really struggle with the “non-fiction” title, actually.  We all know what fiction is: imagination, fantastic worlds, cool characters, illustrations, fun.  So what that does make “non-fiction”?  I try to blur that divide in my books and build worlds for my readers to step into, which I really hope will ignite their curiosity and imagination about the world around them. Also, never underestimate kids!  They are so much smarter than we were!

JS: What are you working on now? 

RQ: We are just finishing up a follow-up to Museum of Odd Body Leftovers. It’s called The Gland Factory: A Tour of Your Body’s Goops, Juices, and Hormones. I was lucky enough work with Clayton Hanmer again and the same amazing team at Greystone Books. Clayton did such a knock-out job on this one. I cannot wait to get my hands on a copy.

That sounds AMAZING! Congrats on the new book and I can’t wait to see it! 

Be sure to check out Rachel’s other works at her website https://www.rachelpoliquin.com/

And see her latest books below!

The Strangest Thing in the Sea book I am Wind book

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